And now a few words trying to explain Donald Trump.
Yes, he’s an unabashed autocrat. But it’s not to be unexpected. He is just acting out to type.
When you are chief executive of a private, family-owned. family-run organization you are acculturated to lording over your underlings. You are dominant. They are subservient. Every whim that crosses your lips becomes a command your vassals fulfill. They are sycophantic to the extreme.
Trump sees America, if not the world, as his private domain. Naturally he expects fealty from all, foreign and domestic, immediate follow-through on even his most outlandish thoughts, especially now that his second administration is not staffed as the first was with intelligent, patriotic professionals who curbed his most extreme wishes.
Sadly, the public face Trump projects is mostly as a quick-witted, even comedic, personality, strong-willed, yes, but always espousing what sounds like initiatives in the best interest of the population. It’s not his fault too many Americans are too naive, even too dumb, to see through his charade.
Is there any hope Trump will change? Kareem Abdul-Jabbar doesn’t think so. In a Substack post he wrote, “Bad people won’t stop being bad because they have some sort of spiritual epiphany. They do not have a nagging conscience thumping like Poe’s tell-tale heart. They feel justified in every evil they perpetuate because they believe they are superior to others. Even if they are secretly miserable (which they aren’t), they don’t know how to be anything else, so their behavior won’t change.
“Yes, their lives could be better, happier, and more fulfilling, but they will never understand that any more than a person raised in a remote tribe in the Amazon misses television. Logic, reason, and appeals to morality will not have any effect on bad people.”
Whose fault is it? Let’s consider tariffs. Trump considers “tariff” to be his favorite word. Little wonder, since a tariff is a cudgel used to force compliance by another country. Here’s what Ronald Reagan had to say about tariffs: “We should beware of the demagogues who are willing to declare a Trade war against our friends, weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world, all while cynically waving the American flag…”
Too bad the Trump Party has forsaken its once iconic leader.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday foreign nations have been “ripping off our country for decades,” thus the need for tariffs. Trump is correct—Americans spend a lot of money on imported goods.
But he is misguided in placing blame overseas. No one forced American companies to manufacture their products outside our borders. China didn’t hijack our manufacturing plants. Neither did Mexico. Nor South Korea, Vietnam or the nations of the European Union.
Simply put, American companies sought cheaper venues of production overseas, much the same way in the middle of the 20th century they abandoned factories in northern states in favor of southern non-unionized states.
The priority of all companies, especially public companies, is to maximize profits for shareholders. By moving production overseas management accomplished its objective.
Meanwhile, collectively, America’s standard of living rose because of the availability of less expensive but equally if not better quality products, from apparel to furniture to electronics to pharmaceuticals.
Trump has his view about the efficacy of tariffs. Most economists and Wall Street see tariffs driving down the economy while unemployment rises.
Even assuming Trump is right, his desire for companies to open plants in America would take months if not years to ramp up production. All the while, consumers and workers will suffer.
